Yes. If you do it right.
First decide how much room you have and where, how much you are going to feed, and if you want a waterfall, horizontal river, or upflow scrubber. This also might help:
The basic guidelines for algae scrubbers is based on how much you feed each day: 1 cube a day, 2 cubes a day, etc. However these are just starting points; a lot of your tank filtering is based on your rocks, so their condition plays a part too in what size scrubbers to get or make, as well as what type of feeding you are doing, and what other filters you will be using. This calculator is the starting point:
https://public.sheet.zoho.com/public/cdm2013/ascalculator-xls-1
Your rocks can supply much more "feeding" to your water that the actual food you put in, because rocks absorb phosphate, and once the rocks are "full" they will put this phosphate back into your water, adding to the phosphate that you are feeding. Generally, each 50 pounds (23 kg) of problem rock adds another 1 cube to the feeding amounts. So if you feed 2 cubes a day, but have 150 pounds of problem rock with nuisance algae, then you would size your scrubber for 5 cubes a day.
Here is a description:
Scrubbers are sized according to feeding. Nutrients "in" (feeding) must equal nutrients "out" (scrubber growth), no matter how many gallons or liters you have. So...
An example VERTICAL waterfall (such as the one I designed in 2008) or VERTICAL upflow (such as the one I designed in 2011) screen size is 3 X 4 inches = 12 square inches of screen (7.5 X 10 cm = 75 sq cm) with a total of 12 real watts (not equivalent watts) of fluorescent light for 18 hours a day. If all 12 watts are on one side, it is a 1-sided screen. If 6 watts are on each side, it is a 2-sided screen, but the total is still 12 watts for 18 hours a day. This screen size and wattage should be able to handle the following amounts of daily feeding:
1 frozen cube per day (2-sided screen), or
1/2 frozen cube per day (1-sided screen), or
10 pinches of flake food per day (2-sided screen), or
5 pinches of flake food per day (1-sided screen), or
10 square inches (60 sq cm) of nori per day (2-sided screen), or
5 square inches (30 sq cm) of nori per day (1-sided screen), or
0.1 dry ounce (2.8 grams) of pellet food per day (2-sided screen), or
0.05 dry ounce (1.4 grams) of pellet food per day (1-sided screen)
High-wattage technique: Double the wattage, and cut the hours in half (to 9 per day). This will get brown screens to grow green much faster, because darker growth needs more light. Thus the example above would be 12 watts on each side, for a total of 24 watts, but for only 9 hours per day. If growth starts to turn YELLOW or CLEAR, then increase the flow, or add iron, or reduce the number of hours. And since the bulbs are operating for 9 hours instead of 18, they will last 6 months instead of 3 months.
HORIZONTAL screens: Multiply the screen size by 4, and the wattage by 1 1/2. Flow is 24 hours, and is at least 35 gph per inch of width of screen [60 lph per cm], EVEN IF one sided or horizontal.
FLOATING SURFACE SCRUBBERS WITH RIBBONS: Screen size is the size of the box (Length X Width), and is 2-sided because the ribbons grow in 3D.
LEDs: Use half the wattage as above. 660nm (red) is best. You can mix in a little 450nm (blue) if you want.
Very rough screen made of roughed-up-like-a-cactus plastic canvas, unless floating surface, which would use gravel and strings instead.
Clean algae:
Every 7 to 14 days, or
When it's black, or
When it fills up, or
When algae lets go, or
When nutrients start to rise
The above sizing guidelines need to be modified in certain situations:
1) If you are building a reef tank which is new, meaning that the rocks are coming from the ocean or from a low-nutrient tank with no algae problems, and if you will just be feeding the fish sparingly, and if you DO want to have other filters and water changes, then you can just use the cube-feeding recommended sizes of the scrubbers described above.
2) If you are building a reef tank which is new as in #1 above, but you DON'T want any other filters or water changes, then double the recommended scrubbing amount in #1, and do it with at least two separate scrubbers This will supply the corals and small fish with the most amounts of food particles and filtering at the critical time when you clean one scrubber You don't need to start the tank with all the scrubbers; one is fine for a few months, and add the others later.
3) If you are building a reef tank which is new as in #1 or #2 above, but the rocks are coming from a nutrient-problem tank which had measurable phosphate or hair algae problems, then the rocks will be soaked with phosphate and this will supply more phosphate to your new tank than the feeding will. So be sure to include this rock when determining the needed scrubbing amount.
4) If you are adding a scrubber to an existing reef tank, and the tank has no measurable phosphate and no nuisance algae, and if you have other filters and water changes and you DO want to keep them, then you can just use the cube-feeding size described above.
5) If you are adding a scrubber to an existing reef tank as in #4 above but you DON'T want to continue using the other filters or water changes, then double the scrubber amount recommend in #4, preferrably with an additional scrubber. This will keep filtering going in one when you clean the other.
6) If you are adding a scrubber to an existing reef tank that has measurable phosphate and green hair nuisance algae on the rocks, and you DO want to continue using other filters and water changes, then you can just use the recommended cube-feeding sizes of the scrubbers. Use stronger scrubber light if possible because the higher phosphate in the water needs brighter light to make the scrubber grow green. And if you double the amount of scrubbing (two scrubbers instead of one), the problems will clear up twice as fast because there will be twice the amount of algae absorbing the nutrients out of the water.
7) If you are adding a scrubber to an existing reef tank that has measurable phosphate and green hair nuisance algae on the rocks as in #6 above, and you DON'T want to continue using other filters and water changes, then double the amount of scrubbing recommended in #6.
8) If you are adding a scrubber to an existing reef tank that has NO measurable phosphate, but has LOTS of green hair nuisance algae on the rocks, then you need the strongest lights possible (for your scrubber size) because the rocks are already full of phosphate, and the algae on the rocks is absorbing this phosphate, meaning you need the strongest scrubbing possible in order to out-compete the algae on the rocks. This is the hardest situation to fix, so you should use as much scrubbing as possible with the strongest light available (for the scrubber size), and use as many other filters and water changes as possible too, until the algae on the rocks turns yellow and lets go. At this point coralline will start to cover the rocks, and you could consider selling some of the extra scrubbers, or removing the other filters or water changes.
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